#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. The session of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Medical Sciences of the USSR gathered at the Norilsk Music School not only the leading scientists of the country, engaged in solving problems of polar medicine, and Norilsk doctors. The session was attended by heads of combine’s enterprises, the public and city authorities.
There were doctors of the 1970s, among whom there were many graduates of the ‘Norillag Academy’. So, in the first row it was easy to recognize Serafim Znamensky, the chief physician of the oncological dispensary, organized by him in the Norilsk camp.
Fulfilling their main task of coordinating medical science, physicians formed the Human Health in Siberia scientific and applied program. In Norilsk, the program was implemented by the Laboratory of Polar Medicine, created after the session in December 1973. Its founders actively participated in the scientific research of the laboratory for the entire quarter century of its activity on the territory.
These years brought the laboratory well-deserved scientific recognition. Academician Vlail Kaznacheev noted that in the process of its development, scientists relied on the experience of serious observations and research carried out by the Norilsk Scientific Society of Physicians:
“Now I am personally acquainted with many. And, frankly, I don’t remember where else I could see such a bold approach to solving problems, such a confident scope in the formation of an idea that I saw in Norilsk”.
Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Norilsk Nickel Polar Division archive
